📅 On This Day in Military History
3 events across history
On the last day of 406, a vast confederation of Vandals, Alans, and Suebi crossed the Rhine — by tradition over the frozen river near Mainz — sweeping past a frontier denuded of troops. They poured into Gaul, sacking cities for years before moving on into Spain and ultimately North Africa.
The Rhine crossing is one of the great turning points of the fall: the permanent breach of the Western Empire's northern frontier. Gaul, Spain, and eventually Africa slipped from Roman control, the provinces were ravaged, and the peoples who crossed went on to found the Vandal kingdom that would later sack Rome itself.
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Both commanders planned the identical attack: strike the other's right flank at dawn on December 31. Bragg moved first, hitting Rosecrans's right with overwhelming force and nearly routing the Union army. The center bent but did not break around the Round Forest — 'Hell's Half Acre' — where desperate Union resistance held. After a two-day pause, Bragg launched a final assault on January 2nd that was repulsed with crushing losses. Bragg then retreated south, conceding the field.
A desperately needed Union victory in the wake of Fredericksburg's disaster. Lincoln wrote to Rosecrans: 'You gave us a hard-earned victory which, had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over.' The battle secured central Tennessee and set the stage for the Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns.
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In a rare Ottoman rearguard success, the English soldier of fortune Valentine Baker Pasha, with a small force, held off Gurko's far larger advancing army for a full day at Tashkessen, covering the retreat of the Ottoman army from Sofia.
A celebrated defensive action that saved an Ottoman army from destruction, Tashkessen could only delay, not halt, Gurko's winter drive that soon took Sofia and Plovdiv.
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